(1280-A) Establishing an automated iPSC culture system for large-scale iPSC line banking and improved reproducibility of differentiation protocols into mature cell types

Abstract: Generating patient-specific and genome-engineered human iPSCs and differentiated mature cell types thereof has become a powerful tool in modeling human diseases, drug screening, and cellular therapies. However, due to the instability of their undifferentiated state, iPSC culture is still labor-intensive and technically challenging compared to standard immortalized cell line culture, leading to variation and limited reproducibility among differentiation experiments.
We have implemented an automated iPSC culture system including the Biomek i7 Automated Workstation for liquid handling and the SpectraMax i3x for monitoring cell density in order to standardize our culture conditions and generate large-scale early passage iPSC line banks. Besides reducing the time and effort needed for manual iPSC culture, we intend to improve reproducibility and minimize variation between iPSC batches and differentiation experiments. Furthermore, we are integrating established differentiation protocols such as differentiation into neuro-muscular organoids (see poster by Lahmann & Rudolph), and other mature 2D and 3D cellular models applicable for disease modeling and drug discovery. Automated differentiation workflows will enable us to include an extensive multi-factor differentiation optimization for each specific iPSC line. Furthermore, the availability of large-scale master banks and the exact monitoring of the starting confluence and morphology will ensure starting each differentiation experiment with comparable cell line conditions. Overall, the implementation of an automated iPSC culture system will produce high quality iPSC line banks and differentiation workflows with improved reproducibility that are needed for the growing demand of iPSC-generated differentiated cell types.